glenndevis.8327

Honestly the only thing the rifle portal needs to become decent is be usable when downed. Like I get what it's intended to be and I LOVE the idea. But with the way it's implemented it's almost never going to be used that way. 1) It's slow (first you need to fire it, then once it's there you need to activate it again to make the portal) 2) if you wanting to use it on someone who's out of position they're probably too confused or panicking or not paying attention to be like yeah right lelts click this portal to be where i have to be. 3) people die too fast to be able to use it to save & get them to your location before they down. Some ways they could fix this: If they'd allow players to use the portal when downed that would increase the usefulness and make up for the skill being slow. Even better, when you reactivate 5 on a person who's downed or if they get downed on the radius of the reactivated 5 they get forcefully teleported if they really don't want to allow players to interact with anything when downed. ALSO If a living person takes the portal they get a heal or if a downed person gets teleported the skill slowly helps revive the downed person. I think they've been way too careful with this skill limiting it in so many ways so players won't be able to abuse it in an weird way to the point it's nearly useless. Especially considering the barrier on the first use is actually pretty decent so IF you ever feel the need to save someone it's most likely going to be on cooldown and by the time it's up they're most likely either already ran back to the group or already down/dead/safe.

Yeah I kinda wish the rifle 5 portal would be usable when downed. Either that or the portal needs to last longer and the skill needs to fire faster. I also kinda wish that the phantasm was a ground target ability that spawns a phantasm that maybe pulses healing or barrier or something supportive.

I'm quite pleased with the weapon overall. There are some things I think could be better though. Friendly Fire: I love that you can target allies when necessary. (even if that's not what players will do 90% of the time) Ambush is very beautiful but range is rather low. Clones using it with Ifinite Horizon should heal a bit more imo. I think rifle clones should heal a little more on their basic attacks as well. Journey: I overall like the skill but it's quite slow. Even the clone it generates feels delayed. Inspiring Imagery: No real complaints. I quite like it. It's a big heal that you can use when necessary but for the most part you'll prob want to use it for the boons. I like that it's pretty much an emergency heal. Phantasmal Sharpshooter: This skill is what I have the most problems with. I like the idea of it but I don't really like the application & honestly I don't think it fits on a "support" weapon. I personally would have liked something that was more supportive overall but it is what it is. I just feel like people will just press it for cannon fodder to upkeep alac/quick on chrono instead of what it's supposed to be for. Due to how most of the Mesmers support traits have been reworked, the class relies quite a lot on shatters to support so players are just gnna press it on cooldown for shatter fodder. And even if you're gnna use it for breakbar damage it's still a very slow ability. I get in PvP it may be intersting to set it up and then combo it with other skills or see what the enemy does to make them "waste" a cooldown or a dodge and follow up afterwards but the weapon in general feels... quite bad for PvP. I think this could AT LEAST be unblockable to give it more use in sPvP maybe? Maybe for WvW the weapon is going to be good (i don't have much WvW experience) but in WvW this phantasm is probably useless. Singularity Shot: Pretty strong skill honestly. The barrier is pretty nice. Resistance is ok and while I think the portal is going to be VERY situational I think in highly optimized groups people will be able to find good use out of it and even in some semi casual groups on voice comm & stuff I think you'll be able to save people as well. I'd love to see some of the restrictions lifted for funs sake and I guess it would be nice if the Mesmer could portal towards his singularity as well to give it some solo use mobility but oh well. Synergies with support traits: I'm slightly disappointed with how the skills or rather heal Mesmer builds synergize. A LOT of the newly reworked traits revolve around shattering. For Chrono you even have to shatter to upkeep alac/quickness but for example Phantasmal Sharpshooter which could be used for breakbar damage is just going to be on cooldown when you need breakbar damage because it creates fodder for your shatters. This is just a personal opinion but i would have preferred it if the support traits were more about tactical use & timing of your skills rather than pumping clones/phantasms/blades for fodder to get more value out of the shatter traits. Which is already how Mesmer has played in dps builds (besides maybe Mirage i guess.) Otherwise I think support Mesmer has a lot of utility & boons. Synergies with elite specs: I feel like this was pretty much made for Chronomancer. However because of how reliant Chrono is on shattering for their alac/quickness it synergizes very well with the reworked traits but talents but Just feels a but off to have a utility phantasm be used for fodder. Virtuoso... Doesn't even have any alac/quickness so not even considering it. My biggest problem is with Mirage. And sure this ismore of a Mirage complaint rather than a rifle one but honestly I think heal Mirage could be a very fun & unique build to play with rifle but due to how bad their alacrity application is ESPECIALLY when considering using rifle. I feel like it's 90% there to be a decent healer with rifle but the fact that you can't give enough alacrity makes it a big flop. It's so close to being good but it's completely pointless to play. This is just a suggestion for Mirage but PLEASE change the trait to give alacrity on ANY weapon ambush additional to the unique boon they get right now. Mirage would still have the problem of being reliant on clones to get their alac while requiring shatters to get other important boons from the support traits but at least it would somewhat work then. Chaos Aura: Since rifle got an innate aoe chaos aura combo & the new support traits lean into chaos aura i thought i'd mention it as well. I think it's cool to have more chaos aura sharing but i'm honestly not a fan of chaos armor at all. it's too random to the point it's not reliable at all. You could give them chaos aura and have it be near pointless. The only reason it's not useless is because of the regen that Chaotic Transference gives but it's not like we're lacking regen now anyway. I wish chaos aura got some sort of rework to make sharing it to allies more worthwhile. I like the idea & design of spreading chaos aura to allies. It's just a shame that it's kind of a very random (meaning it's unreliable and kinda pointless.) Protection is great. But regen (considering we already have tons of it now) and swiftness are kind of duds when those proc. There is no purpose in sharing chaos aura if the pay off of it is completely random. Just feels bad to share. Also this was mostly feedback regarding PvE since I feel like this weapon was mostly designed for PvE. May be pretty good for WvW but I don't have enough WvW experience to talk about this. I can talk about sPvP but I don't think this weapon is going to be very good for sPvP. Maybe some weird tanky bunker build with sword/shield but I think the weapon is too slow to be used properly in PvP. I guess this turned more into overall feedback about heal/support mesmer using the rifle but okay. The few things i really hope gets looked at the most are the Phantasmal Sharpshooter being faster and not requiring to be used on cooldown for optimal boon upkeep, Mirage not requiring staff only to be able to upkeep alacrity & chaos aura actually being turned into a decent aura. I think having support traits that aren't so tied to shatters in specific would be nice too.

Tbh while i'm generally happy with the rifle, i agree that Mesmers are usually quite unconventional and besides the portal the rifle is just raw numbers output.

Tbh i guess one thing i'm sorta disappointed by as well is that for Chrono a t least you wanna shatter to keep up your alac/quickness so the whole clones healing on their auto attack thing becomes a lot less practical. It sounds cool on paper if u can have ur clones auto attack while maybe doing other things or being on your other weapon but with chrono you're just gnna have to shatter them. I guess on Mirage it can be nice but I wish they'd buff Mirage's alacrity overall. But yeah this makes me wish Chrono gave their boons without shattering to make better use of the clone auto attacks.

I love almost everything about the weapon. Woulda been cool if you could have clones "attacking" allies honestly but eh it's fine either way. The only skill i'm a little disappointed with is the phantasm. I wish it was something diff that was supportive. Sure CC is always nice to have but CC is generally something you want to come out FAST. Whether it's for breakbar damage or to interrupt something an enemy is doing. But the phantasm stun just looks VERY slow to me. First you need to cast it and then it takes another sec for the shot to happen. Otherwise i love it.

I'm honestly kinda excited for rifle still. It's just that the trailer didn't really show much at all. I'm very interested inseeing what the clone skill does & what the phantasm will do. Also quite interestend in what the actual basic attack will do since it may matter quite abit considering clones use it too.

I was thinking this from the very beginning when they announced this. I was worried. Sure we have more options to choose from but ofc everyone is gnna want to play the "best" set of weapons. Sometimes there's somethingn nice & niche that people can play with and that's fine i guess but unless they buff specific weapon related traits or traits in general we're gnna end up with irrelevant specs because others can just do it better. Every spec & Every weapon need to have their useful niche for this to work properly and then the weapons still need to be balanced well.

I've got a thick skin so people being toxic doesn't bother me (still should be fixed & addressed though) but it's honestly beyond ridiculous how many afkers there are. I thought i'd do some PvP to progress my legendary armor. First game, enemy team had an afk, easy stomp. 2nd game, myteam had an afk, easily stomped. 3rd game my team had an afk again & once agai neasily stomped. It's literally impossible to have a good ranked experience with afk players just going unpunished. The ONLY time i've seen anything happen to an afk player is when they legit don't connect from the very beginning because that's when I see I lose 0 points but chances are those players just had an issue loading into the game or dced after accepting the queue or so. They're not even the problem because that happens once in 50 games or so. The problem is the amount of players who just go afk after dying once, losing one teamfight, being 100 points behind. This SERIOUSLY needs to be looked at.

The one simple change that would fix sPvP imo is actually have reports matter. It's hard to have a decent pvp scene when about half of the games played have an afker in them. On the suggested change, I think 2v2 & 3v3 should always be available to queue for. At least normals. Not sure for ranked though.

I'm personally fine with whatever they're saying. I guess i got thick skin. And blocking works. U can try reporting but I don't think reports do much. What i have the most problems with is players just going afk instead. Anet really needs to look at reports & punish players a LOT harder I think they should make a blog post explaining how players get punished IF they get punished at all.

After coming back from a 5-6 year break it doesn't surprise me to see people talking about nerfing Mesmers even more. Back then mesmer got nerf after nerf after nerf. Now i come back & see it in a weaker state than before & people still asking for nerfs. It's about time they started buffing mesmer a bit. Wth did they do to phantasms, what happened with Mirage's 2nd dodge? What even is Virtuoso? I like how they always give mesmers cool mechanics but end up nerfing them over & over again to a point where you can't even play it the way it was intended anymore. When confusion was a "mesmer" condition & alacrity was chrono only. Now everyone and their dog does it better than mesmer/chrono.

Honestly I don't necessarily want those players to be banned from the game (well bots should be banned) because the reason why they afk is mostly related to PvP. But definitely they need to be banned from PvP. Even from unranked. Idk start with a 1 day ban for the first offense. A week for the 2nd. A month for the 3rd.

It's not even afk farmers that i've been seeing the most (I have seen a few but if it was just them it wouldn't be enough to make it a big problem for me.) It's the players who start out playing, seeing we are losing (even if it's just by 100 points) and they go afk or just walk around spawn. Or start complaining and then go afk because "bad team."

I've recently returned to the game as well and most of my time playing has been going into PvP. I think as a whole GW2 PvP is pretty amazing. Sadly I feel like it's let down mostly by the amount of afk players. I wish the people who tend to go afk often should get punished harsher or even punished at all. Other than that the balance has always felt a bit wrong. I feel like even back when i played more Necro & Guard felt way too strong, returning now and both necro & guard still feel like the 2 outliers. Just feels like those 2 classes are Anets little babies that can't be bad. Scrapper has been feeling a bit crazy as well honestly. Thief has also always been too strong but I feel like they're just really good at what they're supposed to be good at so i'm kind of a bit more forgiving towards thieves. Other than the amount of afkers & certain balance outliers GW2 has my fav PvP out of any modern popular mmo.